6 Found Slain In Apartment In Queens

By GARRY PIERRE-PIERRE

Published: January 8, 1995

Six people were found slain yesterday -- some shot, others stabbed -- in an apartment in a quiet Queens neighborhood, the police said. Neighbors said at least two victims were teen-age girls.

A seventh person survived the attack, escaping through a rear window of the second-floor apartment in College Point, and was found with gunshot and stabbing wounds on the front lawn, the police said.

"It was a massacre," said Richard A. Brown, the Queens District Attorney, at a news conference at the 109th Precinct station house. He said he could not recall "a crime of such brutality and viciousness."

But the motive was unclear. The police said there were no signs of forced entry to the apartment, where the bodies were found fully clothed and lying in different rooms. They said no drug paraphernalia had been found.

The killings cast a shadow over a day when city officials announced a record decrease in murders in 1994 and a decline in all major categories of crime. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Police Commissioner William J. Bratton pointed to the heartening statistics as evidence of the overall success of the crime-fighting strategies they had put in place. [ Page 26. ]

Mr. Bratton said it was "ironic that on the morning when we were seeing signs" of success, such a crime should occur.

It was the second time in two years that so many had died in a single attack. On St. Valentine's Day 1993, six people were killed in an apartment in Morrisania, the Bronx. In 1984, 10 were slain in East New York, Brooklyn.

The survivor of yesterday's attack was found outside the Skyline Terrace Apartments at 3 A.M. after neighbors called 911. She had been shot and stabbed in the throat and was taken to New York Hospital Medical Center in Queens.

Because of her wounds, the woman was unable to talk. But communicating with her in writing, detectives from the 109th Precinct learned that the slayings apparently occurred about 3 A.M. inside the three-story tan brick building at 25-34 120th Street in a working-class neighborhood near Flushing Bay. They found the bodies there about 11:30 A.M, said Sgt. Joe Gallagher, a police spokesman.

The police would not identify the victims, but said their ages ranged from the teens to the 30's. Neighbors and friends identified some of them as Esperanza Lopez; her daughters Carla, 15, and Paula; and a 16-year-old friend of the girls, Melinda Wynns. The other two victims were men.

A manager at the Cachet Beauty Salon at the corner of 68th Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside, Queens, said Esperanza Lopez was the owner and had just held a grand opening for the salon on Friday.

"She was a beautiful person," said the manager, Anthony Fernandez, "And Carla and Paula, the daughters -- I don't believe it."

The condominium building where the killings took place in College Point is set back behind a green fence in a neighborhood of one- and two-family houses. Clo Vezza, 45, who lives in a two-story private home across the street, said the apartments had been a sore spot with local homeowners.

Some apartments had been bought by people who rented them out to transients, and they attracted prostitution and drugs, she said. "It's taken the neighborhood straight down the toilet," Mrs. Vezza said.

Another neighbor, Deolinda Pereira, 36, from Portugal, said: "This is the first time there's been anything like this. I've been here three and a half years. It's a very quiet place."

Yesterday, neighbors told the police that in recent days there had been a lot of comings and goings at the apartment. But community police officers from the 109th Precinct said the apartment was not known as a drug location.

The police did not receive any calls of shots being fired from the apartment, and it was unlocked when officers arrived, said Chief Raymond Abruzzi, chief of detectives in Queens.

Whatever the motive, he said, "the idea of six people murdered in one location" is "certainly an exceptional crime."

Larry Portorreal, 18, who lives three buildings away from the crime scene, said he had last seen two of the young women who lived there at a New Year's Eve party. He said that the young women lived in the apartment with their mother, another sister and the mother's boyfriend.

Throughout the day, friends of the victims huddled in the lobby of the 109th Precinct station house, crying and comforting each other.

"They're dead," said one woman who was crying shortly after learning that some of the victims were indeed her friends. "My friends are dead."

Photo: Police officers removing the body of one of six people found shot and stabbed to death yesterday in an apartment in College Point, Queens. One woman survived the attack and escaped through a rear window. (Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times) (pg. 26) Map shows where bodies were found. (pg. 26)